Bridging the gap: How Tender Truck is fixing India’s broken trucking market
Founded in 2020, New Delhi-based startup Tender Truck connects logistics companies directly with verified fleet owners, cutting out brokers and reducing empty truck runs across India.
Hailing from a family that runs its own trucking business, Vidhant Monga had a front-row view of how freight hiring works on the ground.
“The process of hiring trucks was completely broken. Transport companies were always trying to find trucks at the ‘right price’. But the orthodox broker networks had created enormous friction,” Monga tells YourStory.
“The market was deeply unorganised. There are companies with annual turnovers of Rs 4,500 crore, of which nearly Rs 4,000 crore goes solely towards hiring trucks from the open market,” he adds.
Determined to bring structure to this chaos, Monga founded Tender Truck in 2020 and now serves as its CEO. The New Delhi-based startup operates as an aggregator platform, enabling logistics companies to hire verified, compliance-checked fleet owners directly, effectively cutting brokers out of the equation.
Tender Truck, launched with an initial investment of Rs 1 crore, currently has a team of about 30 employees.
Solving efficiency problems for drivers
The biggest challenge Monga faced in the initial days was getting truck drivers to trust technology. “Truck drivers don’t immediately trust technology. They always prefer approachability in person with the brokers,” he explains.
After several unsuccessful attempts to get truck drivers to adopt the app, “We switched our mode of operations to WhatsApp,” he says. “Fleet owners were already comfortable communicating there, so adoption became far easier.”
The pivot paid off: Tender Truck has since onboarded more than 10,000 drivers onto its network.
Monga points out that one of the biggest challenges in India’s fragmented transport ecosystem is the lack of consistent, return-leg work for drivers.
“If a driver carries a load from Delhi to Bengaluru, once the delivery is completed, the fleet owner sitting in Delhi has limited ability to find work for that truck in Bengaluru,” he explains.
As a result, drivers often return empty or remain idle—both of which directly impact their earnings.
“This is where we come in. Our platform works like a discovery layer for fleet owners and drivers. It helps identify which drivers in a given location are interested in nearby shipments,” Monga says. Interested drivers then place bids, allowing the team to assess demand in real time.
Once a driver signals interest, Tender Truck carries out a manual verification to ensure the truck is suitable for the consignment, after which the deal is closed on the app, he explains.
On the payments front, transactions happen directly between drivers and fleet owners, based on their mutual agreement. Tender Truck’s role is not to sit in the middle of payments but to ensure drivers don’t have to cover large distances without work, Monga says.
Making a mark in logistics
The logistics startup’s first client was CJ Darcl. Monga says his existing familiarity with the industry helped Tender Truck acquire the logistics company as its first client.
“CJ Darcl were a tough customer to start with. For the first couple of months, we worked with them to ensure our system ran smoothly and our model worked well. We continued to scale and then cracked a deal with our next customer, Delhivery,” he adds.
The B2B startup now has about 55 customers, including CJ Darcl, Delhivery, TCI, and DHL. The app has been downloaded more than 2,500 times and has about 2,200-odd users, of which 1,000 are active.
Tender Truck operates on a trading-margin model, earning a fee on every placement. “If we hire a truck for Rs 50,000 and place it for Rs 52,000, the Rs 2,000 becomes our margin,” Monga says.
“This helps us sustain the business. We also don’t push every vehicle into the market, only those that make commercial sense for us.”
The platform actively tracks how each delivery is executed. It uses AI and ML tools to determine the right price for a particular load and route, while monitoring truck availability. The system then intelligently identifies nearby shipments, helping drivers minimise idle time and maximise utilisation.
Monga believes logistics will continue to remain central to operations in India, and that the $153.9 billion market size stands as proof.
“India is a developing economy, which translates into a huge demand for logistics. The government is taking measures such as developing infrastructure, including highways. But still, there is a long way to go for us to reach the efficiency of a developed country,” he says.
The CEO adds that the company’s immediate focus is to deepen engagement with existing customers rather than chase rapid expansion. “Right now, we handle about 1.5% of their total logistics volume, and I believe we can comfortably take that to 10%. Once we reach that level, we will look at expanding our client base,” he says.
Tender Truck reported revenue of Rs 12 crore in FY25. While the startup is not yet profitable, Monga says the team is targeting Rs 35 crore in revenue in FY26.
Competing with startups like Gurugram-based Raaho and Chennai-based FR8, Monga says Tender Truck sets itself apart due to its deep industrial expertise and focus on intelligent technology.
“We can onboard 1,000 fleet owners at the click of a button. The scalability of our product primarily sets us apart from the rest,” Monga signs off.